Designing solutions that fuse creativity and functionality.

My experience in the business of technology has allowed me to craft skills that go beyond design, challenging my creativity to develop custom solutions based on function followed by form.

Design (with a capital D)

“Projects across mediums, genres, industries, you name it. No artificial limits on anything. Inventing things using whatever materials and means necessary.” is how Jonas Downey, a designer at BaseCamp, defines the task of a designer.

Rather than labeling ourselves as one specific designer, he believes we should skip the formality and simply denote our title as “designer”.

He offers a compelling look at how the industry has made it difficult for new comers or “even worse, the companies hiring”, to understand the type of positions they are trying to fill.

I can attest to the struggle of attempting to identify your abilities and skills with a single label. Over the years I’ve continued to use “Web/Graphic Designer” to convey my ability to work in print and digital mediums. But my day to day task involves a variety of tasks, simple to complex, that others may not have considered to be the job of a “Web/Graphic Designer”.

I appreciate the thought and reasoning behind Jonas’ idea of simply saying “Designer”.

-Caitlin S. Craighead

The Unnecessary Fragmentation of Design Jobs

Hey there, tech designer person. Have you noticed the increasing number of vague specializations we’ve invented for ourselves?